Cheating death in the Gulf

As Sam Gamgee said after his adventure, "Well, I'm home".

To start with, a few illicit pictures - not really allowed to use cameras on rigs - dunno if it's the flash risk or just security, and I never asked.

View from the computer room window - very exciting.



Bart plugs us in - wait for the bang...



Benchamas - my home for the weekend.



Sunset in the Thai Gulf.



Doesn't look like it, but a storm is coming.



Leaving. The yelllow circle on the boat deck is where they landed the glorified rope ladder on a crane which they refer to as a personnel carrier. Lots of fun.



More sunset. The "Tanker" at the front is an FPSO, moored to the sea bed by the large contraption at the prow. It acts as a production rig. The second tanker is there to take oil away.

On the boat, watching them, watching telly. I sat here for 7 hours.


The story of my weekend:
I was picked up from my apartment at 6am on Friday, by a monosyllabic driver in an ancient Merc, and driven the 2-hour trip to the airport in sullen silence. I nodded off - there, I told you it was exciting. On arrival at the tiny airfield I was told it was "sample day", where everyone is given a plastic tub to take to the toilet and pee into. (which brings on a digression - I once heard of a chap who had a vasectomy, and after bringing back a sperm sample, was told "oh thanks but we only wanted urine." Excruciating or what?) So anyway, there I was with my warm tub trying to look like I do this every day, when the bloke gives me two smaller bottles and asks me to split the sample between them, AT THE CHECK-IN DESK. Bizarre - why not give me the two small ones in the first place and let me disappear to the bogs for some privacy? Luckily I didn't spill a drop, which is miraculous for a man with no triangulation. Getting wine from bottle to glass is a challenge for me.

So after a safety briefing, I followed the crowd to the chopper. Ten were boarding, and when the co-pilot asked if anyone was flying for the first time, only I put my hand up. Not actually true - I was flown to the rig off the coast of Angola by chopper 5 years ago, but I have a special talent for remembering irrelevant details and forgetting important facts. So they sat me in the centre of the cabin, away from the emergency exits, presumably in case I pulled any handles out of curiosity. This ensured I was in a cramped position for the our-long flight with nothing to look at except the few instruments I could glimpse between the pilot's and co-pilot's seats, and their body language. Needless to say my lower back began to ache and I squirmed and fidgeted for the whole flight, to the annoyance of the large Scottish gorilla on my right and the emaciated Mancunian on my left.(or is that port and starboard?)

It was, at the time, good weather for flying so I was in fairly good condition when we landed at Benchamas field. I proceeded to work three days of 12-hour shifts, sharing a 4-berth cabin with three extremely quiet and polite Thai engineers. There's really very little to do on a rig, so I found myself in bed every night before 9pm, reading or watching DVD's on my laptop.

The work went well and we (me and my new mate Bart) got our system up and running, and connected it to the existing system without causing any loss of production, thereby avoiding walking the plank or being shot.

On the fourth day we were scheduled to board the 3pm chopper back to shore. However, it so happened that a tropical storm was approaching from the north west, so Chevron's much-practised emergency evacuation drill was swinging into action like a well-oiled, er, oil rig. This meant chaos, basically.

In situations like this, it always rankles that any American nationals are whisked out of danger first, leaving us lesser mortals to slum it on the slow boats.

We waited all day for our boat to arrive, while periodically listening to "our chopper" come and go, filled with fat, privileged prima donnas. I was of course calm and measured - being a representative of the Australian company I'm contracted to - but inside I was raging. I'm not used to being a second class citizen and I don't suppose I ever will be.

Our boat eventually arrived at 5.30pm, by which time we had been subjected to 7 hours in the TV room watching incomprehensible Thai TV at high volume, interspersed with the over-excited antics of the Thais around the pool table. They are good-natured people, always ready to smile and laugh, but my sense of humour had somehow flown off with the last Sikorsky.

Boarding the boat was fun - they use a circular contraption like a kids' climbing frame, hanging by a long rope from a crane, the idea being to cling to the outside of it, while it is lifted and dropped onto the boat deck. The boat deck was 30 metres below the platform deck so much potential for swinging, but luckily the winds were light at that time. Nobody fell off, anyway.

The boat trip took 7 hours, and was similar to a bus-ride I suppose, if said bus happened to take a prolonged detour through 80 miles of fields which had at some point been used as artillery practice.

Chevron had booked us into a hotel and laid on supper for us all, which Bart and I augmented with a couple of cold Heinekens, to the disgust of the Thais, who were going back to the rig as soon as the storm cleared so could not drink.

I should have mentioned that drugs, alcohol and oil rigs don't mix, hence the piss-tests. If found with anything untoward in the bloodstream, they would never work for Chevron again. We, on the other hand, were off back to BKK in the morning, so happy days, glug glug.

That's about it really. We were picked up next morning and driven home to spend a day sleeping, ready for the office tomorrow.

I'll blog again soon.

Be good.